Happy Happy Happy All the Way to the Bank

Usually on Wednesday's around 10 you'll find me sitting in front of the television with a grin on my face, watching the Robertson clan do anything but sell duck calls.

I started watching the show during the fall of 2012, in the midst of the second season (though I wonder if we need a new word for television season.  Calling it a run or a set might be better, but la da di da dee) a wee bit before it became a thing.  I admit the first time I saw it I didn't like it, but a few weeks later I gave it another chance and I watched Si Robertson go to the eye doctor.  

I was hooked.

It was only this past summer, walking around the Virginia Beach Aquarium in the midst of a family vacation, that I noticed people walking around with Duck Dynasty t-shirts.  In short order I learned that you could get Duck Dynasty garden gnomes, and towels, and calenders, and greeting cards, and Duck Dynasty sleep pants, bed sheets, socks, hats, boots, contact lens cases, chia pets, sleeping bags, christmas lights, cookbooks, coffee mugs, and so on and so on forever and ever, Amen.  

The merchandise didn't bother me too much, though I wasn't about to buy any.  It made me a little sad because it left me with a feeling that the show would collapse under its own weight, that the banal and casual brilliance of seasons 1-4 is simply impossible to sustain.  Maybe the Robertson family understands this, and that's why they are grabbing the lime-light while they well and truly can. 

But then there is the planned Duck Dynasty Christmas Album, due in stores on October 29th.  I think that's the last straw for me, a commercialized reach for a bridge too far, and my interest in the show is diminishing.
  

I'm not even sure why it matters to me.  I mean, it's not like I went to see Starry Night at MOMA Queens and there was Van Gogh himself trying to sell me a Paul Gauguin bobble head doll.  This is a show about some rich rednecks who rather enjoy hunting ducks and blowing stuff up, so who cares if it gets mired in commercialism just like everything else in this country does?

I would argue that in a world where most "end of men" sitcoms and movies suggest that the lest vestiges of manhood are merely a crass, unwavering interest in large breasts, it was nice to actually see something relatively wholesome that is nonetheless funny, featuring characters who meet a changing world by sticking to values of faith, family, and ducks.  It will be interesting to see how fame fits into that list.  For me, once you make a commemoration of a phenomenon by putting an old man's face on a t-shirt (as well posters, wall paper, key chains, cumberbunds, physics textbooks, regulation NFL footballs, and Roman Abromavich's bemused soccer watching smile) it loses some of what made it special in the first place.

Yeah, they exist.